The popularity of Bitcoin and the emergence of around 1.500 other digital coins or tokens have drawn more hackers into the cryptocurrency cyber, expanding opportunities for crime and fraud, according to cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows, in a report on Thursday.
Cybercriminals follow the evolution of cryptocurrencies in a largely unsafe and therefore easy unregulated world to make people, businesses and exchanges get rich quickly and easily, "said Rick Holland, vice president of strategy at Digital Shadows .
Digital currencies have quickly become a profitable business over the past couple of years, as companies and financial institutions have expanded their use of the underlying blockchain technology.
With weekly launches of new alternative currencies, or "altcoins," cybercriminals have developed several schemes to defraud cryptocurrency holders. “Crypto jacking,” account takeovers, mining fraud, and initial coin offer (Ico) scams have become increasingly common, the report said.
In crypto jacking, cybercriminals secretly take the browser of another computer and use it to fraudulently extract or create cryptocurrencies, according to the Digital Shadows report. Miners use special software to solve math problems and a number of bitcoins or cryptocurrenics are issued in return.
Crypto Jacker software allows users to clone popular websites and launch spam campaigns.
The cybersecurity company claimed that criminals also commit mining frauds using botnets, collections of devices connected to the Internet, which may include infected PCs, servers and mobile devices controlled by a common type of malware. Users are often unaware that a bot network has infected their system.
Botnets were first used to mine bitcoins in 2014. The process was too complex to be financially feasible, but botnets have made a comeback because new cryptocurrencies like Monero are easier to mine, Digital Shadows said.
The company said the botnets could be rented for $ 40. It said such an offer had "blown off the shelves" with nearly 2.000 locations so far.
The cybercriminals have also been attracted by the growing market of initial tokens, the report says. According to data from Crunchbase, in the 2015 the ICO have collected about 5 billion dollars for various startups and projects. This is growing exponentially from just $ 100 million in the 2016.
Instead of selling scam tokens, criminals target legitimate currencies, stealing funds from ICOs or manipulating prices through the kind of "pump and dump" schemes often used with penny reserves and other less liquid assets.